Monat: April 2017

Cryptocurrency BitConnect Breaks Records in Value and Market Cap

CryptoCurrency's Record Growth

ASHFORD, United Kingdom, March 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — BitConnect Coin (BCC) has announced a new record high, in terms of value and market capitalization. The cryptocurrency's record growth, in a matter of few months, come as the development takes off with the introduction of a range of new apps and a bright outlook towards the future innovations in 2017.

BitConnect Coin (BCC) is an open source, peer-to-peer, community driven decentralized cryptocurrency that allows people to store, invest their wealth and even earn a substantial interest on the balance stored in the wallets. BitConnect Coin has only been a market currency since the 11th of January, 2017, but has already gained a significant global following. Starting from its conceptualization in the fourth quarter of 2016, BCC has just this week set a new record for value per coin and market capitalization.

According to the leading cryptocurrency market website CoinMarketCap, BCC breached the top 20 chart for alternative coins in total capitalization value. BCC's total market capitalization has surpassed the $10 million (USD) mark, to make it the fastest growing altcoin. This sharp increase in market cap has resulted in a matching growth in the coin's value, which passed the $2.00 mark at around the same time. BCC developers see the impressive growth rate as a very positive early sign. By comparison, even the most dominant and valuable cryptocurrency Bitcoin, took over two years to reach the same price.

BitConnect's Head of Development, Satao Nakamoto while describing the cryptocurrency's mission said, "BitConnect's mission is to provide crypto-education and multiple investment opportunities to empower people financially. There are many features and functions to come in 2017. BitConnect's mission is to become the leading crypto-community in the world when it comes to functionality and user base by the year 2020."

The official beta launch of BitConnect's application for Android and iOS mobile platforms will have a positive effect on BitConnect Coin, leading to a further increase in demand and price of the cryptocurrency. In the coming months, BCC will see more innovation, along with the addition of convenience features. The awaited developments in BCC ecosystem includes the launch of BCC Mining and Staking Pool that provides a way for the community to earn; BCC mining and minting rewards; brand new mobile and paper wallets; and BCC Smart Card to allow people use the cryptocurrency for daily use.

BitConnect Coin is designed to offer financial freedom to the masses by reducing if not eliminating the dependency on centralized banking and financial institutions. In addition, the cryptocurrency is also more secure than conventional financial instruments, eliminating the chances of identity theft and other issues that currently plague fiat based electronic payments infrastructure. BitConnect Coin offers a new level of empowerment to its community members. Members can connect socially and financially to a secure, protected community of investors and lenders. By connecting with the community, BCC users can increase the value of their coins in the wallets as the cryptocurrency's price increases.

In less than one year, the BitConnect online community has gained over 50,000 members around the world. It has also added a news department, engaged with online leaders like Kim Dotcom, successfully launched its own digital currency, added a proprietary Bitcoin wallet, launched an innovative global Bitcoin lending program, and surged from zero traffic to a top 100k Alexa ranking. BitConnect has become simply the world's fastest growing online Bitcoin community.

Coin Tech Specifications/Details

BitConnect Coin is a Script (PoW/PoS) consensus algorithm based cryptocurrency with a finite number of tokens. The total number of BCCs are limited to 28 million. The limited number tokens ensure constant appreciation of value in the light of ever increasing demand. The algorithms used on BCC protects the decentralized nature of the platform. BitConnect Coin facilitates quick transactions between wallets allowing people to make instant transactions between each other or to pay for goods or services. Unlike Bitcoin, the block generation time on BCC platform is 2 minutes. These features prevent transaction backlogs and at the same time also proves to be more rewarding during the PoW phase, where miners stand to receive a block reward of 10 BCCs.

COSS.IO: Introducing Simplicity to Cryptocurrencies

Simplicity to CryptoCurrencies

A crypto-one-stop-solution platform, COSS for short, is officially deployed in beta today. The platform merges the most popular cryptocurrency services, e.g. a wallet service, an exchange, a merchants’ platform, into a shared virtual space, in which cryptocurrency customers and merchants can meet and interact. Developed by an international team headquartered in Singapore under C.O.S.S. PTE LTD license, the COSS platform was first introduced as a final examination project that the CEO of the company, Rune Evensen presented to the committee of the MIT Fintech course in 2016. That was the first draft of a gigantic project that would hardly see the light of day, if it hadn’t received the support of the participants and the experts of the course.

A very thorough plan for COSS was designed shortly after the course finished, with the project kickoff scheduled for December 2016 followed by the testing phase in the beginning of the year 2017. Since then, layer by layer, the platform came to live. The developers’ team nicknamed COSS the “living” project, as it has no end-destination point and can last forever like the internet itself, with more and more startups being added with the time.

In February 2017 the white paper was published on coss.io homepage outlining the technical specifics of the platform. Having learned from the mistakes of the cryptocurrency pioneers such as bitcoin, the developers of COSS focused on the security of the platform and implemented the platform on top of the Ethereum blockchain. The main idea behind COSS is the creation of a single user-friendly ecosystem suitable for mass adoption and non-technical users, which would combine crypto and fiat currency services, available for customers with a single registered account all in one place.

"Redefining simplicity has been on our mind since day one, and we truly believe that COSS can make it a lot simpler for any average Joe out there to enter the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-related products and services,". Upon its soft launch in beta, the COSS platform has an exchange with payment gateway/POS system running. In the nearest future, the following features will be setup: a crowdfunding tool, an ICO platform, 3rd party provider plugins, market cap and coin overviews, a blockchain forum, a remittance and a payment gateway.

The native currency of the COSS platform VEROS, is implemented as an Ethereum smart contract, which governs the validation, the distribution, the value and the ownership of the tokens. Apart from VEROS, the platform will support the most widely-used cryptocurrencies that customers will be able to convert to fiat via the COSS exchange service. A lot more features will be added to the platform during the next phase of development. "I would like to personally thank all the involved parties that have contributed endless hours to this project. Although we are just getting started, it is a huge MILESTONE for us to finally go live,"

About

COSS stands for Crypto-One-Stop-Solution and represents a platform which encompasses all features of a digital economic system based on cryptocurrency. The COSS system consists of website payments, seller tools, a marketplace, financial module, e-wallets, coin facilities and a mobile platform. The platform unifies the most popular crypto and fiat currency services, e.g. exchanges, payrolls, wallets, acquisitions, and transactions. VEROS is a secure and transparent cryptocurrency, launched in October 2016, and implemented on the Ethereum blockchain as a smart contract. VEROS is designed specifically for massive adoption and everyday use.

Ledger grabs $7 million for its cryptocurrency hardware wallets

If your following CryptoCurrencies

Things are going incredibly well for Ledger these days. People find bitcoins, ethers, and other cryptocurrencies exciting again. And the French startup just raised a $7 million Series A round to make hardware security devices ubiquitous. MAIF Avenir, XAnge, Wicklow Capital, GDTRE, Libertus Capital, Digital Currency Group, The Whittemore Collection, Kima Ventures, BHB Network and Nicolas Pinto participated in today’s funding round.

If you’ve been following cryptocurrencies for a while, you know that you shouldn’t trust bitcoin and ethereum startups that centralize everything. There have been many hacks, there will be more hacks. And you don’t want to trust some startup’s security team when you can do it yourself. Sure, you can run your own bitcoin wallet on your computer. But hackers could still access your computer and your bitcoin wallet, so it’s still a point of failure.

Ledger makes hardware wallets for multiple currencies. These tiny devices have a secure element. You might not even realize it, but your smartphone also has a secure element to handle fingerprint readers or NFC payments, such as Apple Pay or Android Pay.

Ledger runs some tasks directly on the secure element, making it much more secure than running an app on your phone or your computer exclusively. This way, you can easily protect your bitcoins without a lot of security knowledge. Nobody can access the private keys on the device. And the device constantly checks the integrity of the firmware.

The company also makes sure that nobody can compromise the device during the manufacturing process. “When we manufacture the devices, all chips receive a Ledger certificate,” co-founder and CEO Eric Larchevêque told me. “When the device boots up, the computer sends a security challenge and the device answers.”

The Ledger Nano S is the company’s most popular device. It’s the size of a USB key and has a tiny display. After initiating a transaction from your computer, you’ll have to confirm the transaction on the device itself and enter your PIN code. This way, even if your computer has been compromised, the transaction order won’t go through on the device and you won’t be able to confirm the transaction.

The company also makes a high-end device with a built-in touch screen called the Ledger Blue. The Ledger Nano S costs around €70 while the Blue costs €275. Ledger has sold more than 50,000 wallets so far, and the last few months have beat the company’s expectations by a wide margin. But cryptocurrency wallets are just the first step.

By running a secure operating system on a secure element, there are other potential applications. For instance, Ledger could sell chips so that companies working in sensitive industries can make sure their servers weren’t compromised. You can imagine hedge funds and financial institutions using Ledger products. Energy suppliers could also use Ledger’s technology to make sure that the consumption level is legit. That’s why the company is raising money to go beyond hardware wallets and find those industrial clients.

Palmer Luckey, a founder of the Facebook-owned virtual-reality company Oculus, speaking with a reporter at a San Francisco conference in 2014. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Palmer Luckey, a founder of the virtual-reality technology company Oculus, has left Facebook three years after the social network acquired his company for close to $3 billion.

Mr. Luckey’s departure was announced two months after a trial in federal court over allegations that he and several colleagues had stolen trade secrets from a video-game publisher, ZeniMax Media, to create the Oculus technology. A jury found Facebook liable for $500 million in damages, in part for Mr. Luckey’s violation of a confidentiality agreement.

“Palmer will be dearly missed,” Tera Randall, an Oculus spokeswoman, said in a statement. “His inventive spirit helped kick-start the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry.”

Ms. Randall declined to disclose the terms of Mr. Luckey’s departure.

The move adds another twist to Facebook’s bumpy foray into virtual-reality technology. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has bet big on virtual reality as part of the social network’s future, saying he envisioned social interactions between people will someday exist inside virtual worlds. Oculus, he has said, could be a catalyst for that.

But from the start, Oculus has run into problems. Adoption of the Oculus technology and headsets has been slower than Facebook had anticipated. The selection of content made for VR headsets is still small, though growing.

“These things end up being more complex than you think upfront,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in January while appearing in court for the ZeniMax trial. “If anything, we may have to invest even more money to get to the goals we had than we had thought upfront.”

Mr. Zuckerberg has committed to spending more than $3 billion over the next decade to get virtual reality off the ground and into the mainstream.

Mr. Luckey has had other stumbles. In 2016, it became public that he had donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump political organization that promoted far-right memes and slogans on social media sites like Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. He has since apologized for the impact his actions had on Oculus and its partners.

Mr. Luckey did not immediately respond to a Facebook message requesting comment.

In January, Facebook appointed a new leader, Hugo Barra, to head up the company’s virtual-reality efforts, including Oculus.

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Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero. It’s only a matter of time.

Instagram

According to Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram, which is the latest to adopt algorithmic news feed or timeline, on average people will now miss about 70% of posts in their feed.

Facebook

On the other hand, a study by Locowise suggests that average post reach on Facebook is only about 10.8% in Feb, 2016. In essence what that means is that if you have 100 followers of your page, it is likely that only 10-11 will actually see your posts on their feed.

Twitter

Twitter is no exception here. Twitter has also adopted algorithmic timeline that sorts tweets based on interest and importance, irrespective of time. This issue starts magnifying as your page followers grow in number.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is no exception here. LinkedIn has also adopted algorithmic timeline that sorts posts.

The Indian cryptocurrency ecosystem recently woke up to a shocking news on leading media outlets. It was reported that the use of Bitcoin in the country is illegal and could attract penalties under anti-money laundering laws. However, the report was not entirely accurate, and the news platforms were quoting a Member of Parliament seeking the implementation of cryptocurrency regulations by calling Bitcoin a “Ponzi scheme”.

While the confusion was eventually cleared, the incident has sown the seeds of mistrust about the government’s stance on the digital currency. Going by the example of few drastic decisions taken by the government in the past, they have come together to demand some clarity from the government regarding its stance on cryptocurrency. They have started an online signature campaign, petitioning the government to award a legal status for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the country.

The petition is probably the first strong public campaign organized by the recently formed Digital Asset and Blockchain Foundation of India. Addressed to Arun Jaitley — India’s Finance Minister, Urjit Patel – Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and S Selvakumar – the Joint Secretary of the Department of Economics Affairs Room, the petition makes a mention of various benefits offered by Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and how it can be used for the betterment of the country. Also, it asks the government to take steps towards stopping bad actors who misuse the cryptocurrency than banning the technology and its use.

The petition on Change.org also says,

“Cryptocurrencies will be available irrespective and the illegal users do not care about its legal status. Please do not take hasty steps and prevent innovation, economic activity and jobs. This will only stop good uses of cryptocurrencies.”

In a country which has a considerable percentage of the unbanked population and ranks at the top for receiving the highest remittance, Bitcoin can offer an efficient and inexpensive solution. The use of cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology will not only speed up the financial services sector but also a range of other industries. With the adoption of distributed ledger technology, the government can also combat rampant corruption and red tape. But strict cryptocurrency regulations will stifle progress in this regard, preventing the country from keeping up with the global trend.